Even during the time when he had revered the great ideas of humanity, he had always felt a certain
aversion
to them in the mouth of anybody else.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
I've tried to arouse Leona's reason a little and, so to speak, her economic understanding, as far as they apply to the exploitation of her body.
And on the evening when my illiquidity began to make itself palpable to me, I went to her to borrow a few hundred crowns, which I assumed Leona would have laid aside.
You ought to have heard this harpy scolding me for being a skinflint, a robber; she even cursed my religion!
The one thing she didn't claim was that I had robbed her of her innocence.
But you're wrong about Leona's future; do you know who her friend is now, right after me?
He bent over to Ulrich and whispered a name in his ear; he did this more out of respect than because the whispering was necessary.
-W hat do you say to that? You have to admit she's a beauty.
Ulrich was astounded. The name Fischel had whispered to him was Arnheim.
Ulrich asked after Gerda. Fischel blew his soul's breath out through pursed lips; his face became anxious and betrayed secret worries. He raised his shoulders and slackly let them fall again. - I thought that you might know where she's staying.
- I have a suspicion-Ulrich answered-but I don't know. I assume she's taken a job.
-Job! As what? As governess in a family with small children! Just think, she takes a job as a domestic servant when she could have every luxury! Just yesterday I concluded a deal on a house, top location, with an apartment that's a palace by itself: But no, no, no! Fischel beat his face with his fists; his pain about his daughter was genuine, or at least was the genuine pain that she was preventing him from enjoying his vic- tory completely.
-W hy don't you tum to the police? Ulrich asked.
- O h , please! I can't advertise my family affairs to the world! Besides, I want to, but my wife won't hear of it. I immediately paid my wife back what I had lost of hers; her high-and-mighty brothers aren't going to wear out their mouths about me! And in the last analysis, Gerda is as much her child as mine. In that line I'm not going to do anything without
1666 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
her agreement. Halfthe day she rides around in my car and searches her eyes out. Of course that's absurd; that's not the way to go about it. But what can one do when one's married to a woman!
- I thought your divorce was under way?
- I t was. That is, only verbally. Not yet legally. The lawyers had just fired the first shots when my situation visibly improved. I don't know myself what our current relation is; I believe Clementine is waiting for a discussion. Of course she's still living at her brother's.
-But then why don't you simply hire a private detective to find Gerda? Ulrich interrupted, having just thought of it.
-Good idea, Fischel replied.
- S h e can be tracked down through Hans Sepp!
- M y wife intends to drive out to Hans Sepp yet again one of these
days and work on him; he's not saying anything.
- O h , you know what? Hans must be doing his military service now;
don't you remember? He got a six-month postponement on account of some exams he had to take, which he ended up not taking. He must have gone in two weeks ago; I can say that precisely because it was very unusual, since around this time only the medical students are called up. So your wife will hardly find him. On the other hand, his feet could re- ally be held to the fire through his superiors. You understand, if some- one there squeezes him between his fingers, it will really loosen his tongue!
·-Splendid, and thank you! I hope my wife will see that too. For as I said, without Clementine I don't want to undertake anything in this di- rection; otheiWise I'll immediately be accused again of being a mur- derer!
Ulrich had to smile. -Freedom seems to have made you anxious, my dear Fischel.
Fischel had always been easily irritated by Ulrich; now that he had become an important man, even more so. -Y ou exaggerate freedom- he said dismissively-and it appears that you've never quite understood my position. Marriage is often a struggle as to who is the stronger; ex- traordinarily difficult as long as it involves feelings, ideas, and fantasies! But not difficult at all as soon as one is successful in life. I have the im- pression that even Clementine is beginning to realize that. One can argue for weeks over whether an opinion is correct. But as soon as one is successful, it is the opinion of a man who might have been mistaken but who needs this incidental error for his success. In the worst case, it's like the hobbyhorse ofsome great artist; and what does one do with the hob- byhorses of great artists? One loves them; one knows that they're a little secret. Since Ulrich was laughing freely, Fischel did not want to stop
From the Posthumous Papers · 1667
talking. -Listen to what I'm telling you! Pay close attention! I said that if one has no other ambitions I nothing to do I has nothing I besides feel- ings and ideas, the quarrel is endless. Ideas and feelings make one petty and neurotic. Unfortunately, that's what happened with me and Clem- entine. Today I have no time. I don't even lmow for certain whether Clementine wants to come back to me; I only believe that she does; she's sorry, and sooner or later that will come out of itself, but then most cer- tainly in a simpler and better way than if I were to think out down to the last detail how it has to come about. You could never do business, either, with a plan that is unhealthily pinned down in evexy detail!
Fischel was almost out of breath, but he felt free. Ulrich had been listening to him seriously, and did not contradict. -I'm quite relieved that everything has taken a tum for the better, he said politely. -Y our wife is an excellent woman, and when it will be advantageous for you to have a great house, she will fulfill that task admirably.
-Exactly. That too. Soon we'll be able to celebrate our silver anniver- sary, and joking aside, if the money is new, the character at least ought to be old. A silver-anniversary is worth almost as much as an aristocratic grandmother, which, moreover, she also has.
Ulrich got up to leave, but Fischel was now in high spirits. - B u t you shouldn't think that Leona managed to clip my wings! I left her to Dr. Amheim with no envy whatsoever. Do you lmow the dancer . . . He mentioned an unfamiliar name and pulled a small photo from his wallet. -W ell, where should you lmow her from, she has seldom appeared in public; private dance evenings, distinguished, Beethoven and Debussy, you lmow, that's now the coming thing. But what I wanted to tell you: you're an athlete, can you manage this? He stepped over to a table and accompanied his words with an echo ofarm and leg. -For instance, she lies this way on a table. The upper body flat on the top, her face leaning with one ear on her propped-up arms, and smiling deliciously. But at the same time her legs are spread apart, like this, along the narrow edge of the table, so that it looks like a big T. Or she suddenly stands on her forearms and palms-like this-of course I can't do it. And she has one foot way over her head and almost on the ground, the other against the cabinet up there. I tell you, you couldn't do a tenth of it, in spite of your gymnastics. That's the modem woman. She's lovelier than we, cleverer than we, and I believe that ifI tried to box with her I'd soon be clutching my belly. The only thing in which a man is stronger today than a woman is in earning money!
1668 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Who had been responsible for Hans Sepp's receiving his black mark? Remarkably enough, it was Count Leinsdorf. Count Leinsdorf had one day asked Ulrich about this young man, and Ulrich had presented him as a harmless muddlehead; but Count Leinsdorfhad recently taken to mis- trusting Ulrich, and this information confirmed his conviction that in Hans Sepp he had before him one of those irresponsible elements who are continually preventing anything good from being done in Kakania. Count Leinsdorf had lately become nervous. He had heard through General Director Leo Fischel that a quite distinct group of immature young people that had formed around Hans Sepp had been the real in- stigator of the demonstration that had caused His Excellency more un- pleasantness than might be supposed. For this political procession had created "a quite unfavorable impression upstairs. " There was no ques- tion that it was completely harmless, and that if one had seriously wanted to prevent such a thing it could be done by a handful of police at any time; but the impression such events make is always much more ter- rifying than they actually merit, and no true politician dares neglect im- pressions. Count Leinsdorf had had serious discussions about this with his friend the Commissioner of Police, which had not produced any re- sults, and when Count Leinsdorf afterward learned the name of Hans Sepp, the Commissioner was quite ready to have this lead followed up in order to appease His Excellency. The Commissioner had been con- vinced from the start that any findings that might have previously es- caped his police would be trifling, and was only confirmed in this opinion by the results ofthe inquiries he had ordered. But still, the pre- occupation of a bureaucracy with an individual always leads to the con- clusion that this individual is shady and unreliable, that is to say, as measured by the standards of precision and security according to the rules and regulations one applies in a bureaucracy. For this reason the Commissioner found it expedient, when there was room for doubt, not to reproach a man like Count Leinsdorf for imagining things but rather to allow the case of Hans Sepp to be treated according to the model that at the moment nothing could be proved against the suspect, on which account he only remained under suspicion until the matter could be completely cleared up. This complete clearing up was tacitly set for Saint Never-Plus-One's Day, when all the files that are still open rise up from the graves ofthe archives. That in spite ofthis it brought suffering on Hans Sepp was a totally impersonal matter, which did not involve trickery ofany kind. A buried open file must from time to time be raised from its grave in order to note on it that it is still not possible to close it,
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 66g
and to mark it with a date on which the archivist is again to present it to his supervisor. This is a universal law of bureaucracy, and if it should involve a file that was never intended to be closed, on the pretext that its documentation was not complete, one must pay very close attention, for it can happen that bureaucrats are promoted, transferred, and die, and that a neophyte receiving the file causes, in his excessive zeal, a small supplementary investigation to be added to one of the last investigations that took place years ago, which causes the file to be kept alive for a few weeks until the investigation ends as a report to be inserted in, and dis- appear with, the file. Through some such process Hans Sepp's file, too, had, without any particular pwpose, become current; since Hans Sepp happened to be in the army, his file had to go to the Ministry of Justice, from there to the Ministry of War, and from there to the Command- ing Officer, etc. , and it is easy to understand how, handed on through the various in and out stamps, presentation stamps, confirmations of action, additions with bureaucratic courtesy, Relinquished, For Re- port, Not Known in this Office, and such, this file took on a dangerous appearance.
Meanwhile, in desperation, Gerda had run to Ulrich and reported that Hans had to be rescued, because he was not up to the conditions he had fallen into and was already clearly showing alarming signs of crack- ing up completely. She had still not returned to her parents' house, kept her whereabouts hidden, and was quite proud at having found some piano lessons to give and being able to add a few pennies to the money her friends lent her. At that time Leo Fischel was making the most strenuous efforts to win her back, and so Ulrich intervened as mediator. After long back-and-forth and paternal admonitions, Gerda let herself be talked into considering favorably a promise to move back to her par- ents' if Papa would declare himself ready and bring about, and Ulrich would support, freeing Hans from his doom. Ulrich spoke with General Director Fischel about it, and General Director Fischel had by then done many a worse thing than was now being asked of him in order to get his daughter back. He turned to Count Leinsdorf. General Director Leo Fischel was actively involved in business relations with Count Leinsdorf; after some commiseration and reflection, His Excellency rec- ommended him to Diotima, who at the moment was on intimate footing with the Ministry of War and, for this reason too more suitable than he was, because this whole affair, especially because ofthe slightly irregular solution required, was more the province ofwoman, ofthe heart, and of feminine tact. In this way Leo Fischel came to Diotima.
Count Leinsdorfhad already prepared her for the visit, and she made a powerful impression on Fischel. He had thought that the time when
1670 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
anything intellectual could compel his admiration lay behind him. But it appeared that beautiful women were especially qualified to soften his newly acquired hardness. He had had his first relapse with Leona. Leona had a face of the sort that General Director Fischel's parents would have admired, and this face again came to his mind when he saw Diotima, although there was really no similarity. At that time, the most miserable drawing teacher or photographer would not have been at peace with himself if he had not felt in his hair or his necktie some breath of genius. For this reason Leona, too, was not simply beautiful for Leo but a genius of beauty; that was the special charm through which she had led him astray into risky undertakings. - A pity she had such a mean character, Fischel thought. - H e r long fat legs were a long sight lovelier than the desiccated legs of these modem dancers. He did not know whether it was the desiccated legs or the unpleasant character that made him think of his wife, Clementine, but at any rate he remembered with emotion the happy years of his marriage, for then Clementine and he had still believed in the value ofgenius, and ifone considers this in a well-disposed way, it was not so misplaced; the line of Leo Fischel's life, looked at in this light, showed no break, for in the last analysis the belief that there were privileged geniuses was a possible way ofjustifying ruth- less and risky deals. Diotima possessed the quality of awakening such ideas that roam through the far reaches of the soul when one sat oppo- site her for the first time, and General Director Fischel meanwhile needed only to brush his hands through his sideburns once and set his pince-nez to rights before he began to speak with a sigh. Diotima con- firmed this sigh with a motherly smile, and before Fischel even got to what he wanted to say, this woman with a wholly justified reputation for her gift ofempathy said: - I have been told the purpose ofyour visit. It is sad; humanity today suffers grievously from its failure to produce more geniuses, while on the other hand it denies and persecutes every young talent that might perhaps develop into one.
Fischel ventured the question: - Y o u have heard what's happening to my protege? He's a troublemaker. Well, and what of it? All great people were troublemakers in their youth. I do not, by the way, in the least con- done it. But he was also, ifyou will permit me the observation, a forceps birth; his head was somewhat compressed; he is extremely irritable, and I thought that that might perhaps be a way . . . ?
Diotima raised her eyebrows sadly. - I spoke about it with one of the leading gentlemen of the War Ministry; unfortunately, I must tell you, General Director, that your request is meeting with almost insurmount- able difficulties.
Sadly and indignantly Fischel raised his hands. -But one cannot
From the Posthumous Papers · 1671
force an intellectual person when it goes against the intellect! The fellow has some ideas about refusing service in wartime, and the gentlemen will end up shooting him on mel
-Y es, Diotima replied. -Y ou are so right! One should not force an intellectual when it goes against the intellect. You are voicing my own opinion. But how is one to make a general understand that?
A pause ensued. Fischel almost thought he should leave, but when he scraped his feet Diotima laid a hand on his arm with mute permission to remain. She seemed to be thinking. Fischel racked his brains to see ifhe could help her find a good idea. He would have gladly offered her money for the leading gentleman of the War Ministry she had men- tioned; but such an idea was at that time absurd. Fischel felt helpless. -A Midas! occurred to him; why, he did not exactly know, and he sought to recollect this ancient legend, without quite being able to. The lenses of his spectacles almost misted over with emotion.
At this moment Diotima brightened. - I believe, General Director, that I perhaps might indeed be able to help you a little. I would in any case be delighted if I could. I can't get over the idea that an intellectual can't be forced against the intellect! Of course, it would be better not to talk too much to the gentlemen of the War Ministry about the nature of this intellect.
Leo Fischel obligingly concurred with this circumspection.
- B u t this case has also, so to speak, a maternal side--Diotima went on-a feminine, unlogical aspect; I mean, given so-and-so many thou- sands of soldiers, just one can't be so important. I'll try to make clear to a high officer who is a friend of mine that out of political considerations His Excellency considers it important to have this young man mustered out; the right people should always be put in the right places, and your future son-in-law is not of the slightest use in a barracks, whereas he . . . well, somehow that's the way I see it. Unfortunately, the military is uncommonly resistant to exceptions. But what I hope is that we can at least get the young man a fairly long leave, and then we can think what to do about the rest.
Charmed, Leo Fischel bent over Diotima's hand. This woman had won his complete confidence.
The visit was not without its effect on his way of thinking either. For understandable reasons, he had lately become quite materialistic. His experiences of life had led him to the viewpoint that a right-thinking man had to watch out for himself. Be independent; need nothing from others for which you did not have something they wanted in return: but that is also a Protestant feeling, much as it was for the first colonists in America. Leo Fischel still loved to philosophize, even though his time
1672 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
for it had become much more limited. His affairs now sometimes brought him into contact with the high clergy. He discovered that it is the mistake of all religions to teach virtue as something which is only negative, as abstinence and selflessness; this makes it anachronistic and gives the deals one has to make an aura of something like secret vice. On the other hand, the public religion ofefficiency, as he met it in Germany through his business, had seized hold of him. People are glad to help a capable and enterprising person; in other words, he can get credit any- where: this was a positive formula that allowed one to get somewhere. It taught one to be ready to help withou~ reckoning on gratitude, just as Christian teaching demands, although it did not include the uncertainty of having to rely on noble feeling in someone else, but made use of ego- tism as the single dependable human quality, which it without doubt is. And money is a tool of genius that makes it possible to calculate and regulate this basic quality. Money is ordered selfishness brought into re- lation with efficiency. An enormous organization of selfishness accord- ing to the hierarchical order of how it is earned. It is a creative umbrella organization built on baseness-emperors and kings have not tamed the passions the way money has. Fischel often wondered what human demi- urge might have invented money. Ifeverythingwere to be accessible to money, and every matter to have its price, which unfortunately is still far from being the case, then any other morality besides the existence of trade would be of no use at all. This was his opinion and his conviction.
Even during the time when he had revered the great ideas of humanity, he had always felt a certain aversion to them in the mouth of anybody else. If someone simply says "virtue" or "beauty," there is something as unnatural and affected about it as-when an Austrian speaks in the past tense. Now even that had increased. His life was consumed by work, striving for power, efficiency, and the dependence on the greatness of affairs, which he had to observe and exploit. The intellectual and spiri- tual spheres came to seem to him more and more like clouds having no connection with the earth. But he was no happier. He felt himself some- how weakened. Every amusement seemed to him more superficial than before. He increased his stimuli, with the result that he succeeded only in making himself more distracted. He made fun of his daughter, but secretly he envied her her ideas.
And as Diotima had spoken so naturally and freely of maternal feel- ing, soul, mind, and goodness, he was constantly thinking: -What a mother this would be for Gerda! (? wife for you) He wept inside to hear the beauty of her speech, and he had great satisfaction in noticing how these great words gave birth to a tiny element of corruption-however elegantly-for she was ultimately fulfilling: his request, whatever reasons
From the Posthumous Papers · 1673
might have been behind it. In certain cases, when there is a question of some injustice, idealism is almost better than naked calculation; this was the teaching that Fischel drew directly from the impressions of his visit, and that he intended to think about urgently on his further course.
Hans Sepp had left the barracks and not shown up for duty, although he had been transferred from the hospital back to his company. He knew that his return would entail the most unbearable consequences; being punished like an animal and, still worse-for punishment is soli- t:aty-beforehand the dull, set face of the captain and the necessity of having to be interrogated by him. Hans knew that he had made up his mind not to go back. For the first time the holy fire of defiance again flared up in him, and the unbending sense ofpurity that avoids contami- nation with the impure flashed through him. This made even more of a torture the memory that he had lost the right to it. He considered his illness incurable and was convinced that he had been sullied for the rest of his life. He had resolved to kill himself; he had left the barracks to completely cut off a return to life; the thought that in a few hours he would have killed himselfwas the only thing that could to some degree substitute for his self-respect, even ifit could not restore it.
In order not to be immediately recognized ifthey should be looking for him, he had put on civilian clothes. He walked through the city on foot, for he felt incapable of taking a cab; he had a long route before him, as it had seemed to him for some reason a matter ofcourse that he would kill himself only in the open countryside. He actually could have done it on the way, in the middle of the city; presumably, certain ceremonies merely serve to postpone the business a bit, and among these Hans in- cluded a last glimpse of nature; but he was not at all one of those people who think about such questions in a situation such as the one he was now in. The famous dark veil that arises when the moisture content of the emotions becomes extreme without precipitating tears lay before his eyes, and the noises of the world echoed softly. Passing cars, the throng of people, housefronts stretching for blocks, all looked like a bas-relief. The tears that Hans Sepp did not want to shed outwardly in public or for other reasons nonetheless fell through him inwardly as if down an in- credibly deep, dark shaft onto his own grave, in which he already felt himself lying, which signifies about the same thing as that he was simul- taneously sitting beside it and grieving for himself. There is in all this a force that is very cheering, and by the time Hans got to the city line,
1674 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
where the train tracks ran upon which he wanted to throw himself as soon as a train came along, his grief had become attached to and affili- ated with so many things that it really felt quite good. The stretch he was on was apparently not well traveled, and Hans had to tell himself that upon arriving he would have immediately thrown himself in front of a train had one happened to be passing by at that instant, but that not lmowing the schedule, he could not simply lie down on the tracks and wait. He sat down among the sparse vegetation on the slope at the top of a cut where the railway made a curve, and he could see in both direc- tions. A train passed, but he gave himself time. He observed the incred- ible increase in speed that takes place when the train shoots, as it were, through one's vicinity, and listened to the din of the wheels in order to be able to picture how he was going to be pounded in it by the next train. This clanging and bawling seemed, in contrast to what he saw, to last for an extraordinruy length of time, and Hans turned cold.
The question of what had made him want to end his life by means of a railway train was not at all clear. Hanging had something distorted and spooky. Jumping out a window is a woman's way. He had no poison. To cut his veins he needed a bathtub. On this path of eliminating other pos- sibilities, he pursued methodically the same course he had taken in blind determination with a single step: it satisfied him; his instincts had not yet been affected. To be sure, he had left out death by shooting; he thought of it now for the first time. But Hans did not own a pistol, nor did he lmow what to do with one, and he did not want to share his last moment with his army rifle. He had to be free of small misfortunes when he ex- ited this life. This reminded him that he had to prepare himself in- wardly. He had sinned and contaminated himself: he had to hold on to that. Someone else in his situation might perhaps have hoped for the prospect of recovery; but while recovery might be possible, salvation was irrevocably lost. Involuntarily, Hans pulled out of his coat his little note- book and a pencil; but before he could jot down his idea, he remem- bered that this was now quite pointless. He idly held notebook and pencil in his hands. His whole mind was directed at the phrase that he had become impure and godless. There was a lot to be said about that. For instance, that Christianity, influenced by Judaism, permitted sin to be redeemed through remorse and penitence, while the pure, Teutonic idea of being healthy and whole permitted of no bargaining or trading. Wholeness is lost once and for all, like virginity; and of course that is precisely where the greatness and challenge of the idea lies. Where today does one find such greatness? Nowhere. Hans was convinced that the world would suffer a great loss from his having to eliminate himself. The size and force of a train was really almost the only possible way of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1675
expressing the size and force of such a case. Another one went past. This technological marvel was small and tiny if one compared it to the astro- nomical construction techniques of the Egyptians and Assyrians, but at all events a train almost succeeded in enabling the present to express itself gothically, yearning outward beyond the limitations of matter. Hans raised his hand and almost irresolutely waved at people, who waved back and shoved their heads out the window in bunches, like the people-grapes on ancient naive sculptures. This made him feel better, but feeling good, grief, and everything he could think of was simply like smoke, and when it had drifted away the sentence that Hans Sepp had become impure and was not to be saved lay there again, undisturbed;
nothing lasting was connected with it, the idea no longer wished to grow.
1
If Hans had been sitting at home before a table with pen and paper, it
perhaps might have turned out otherwise; it was just this that gave him the feeling that he was here for no other purpose than to put an end to his existence.
He snapped the pencil in two and tore the notebook into little pieces. That was a major step. Then he climbed down the slope, sat in the grass at the edge of the gravel ballast, and threw the shreds of his intellectual world in front of the next train. The train scattered them. Nothing was to be found of the pencil; the bright paper butterflies, broken on the wheels and sucked up, covered the right-of-way on both sides for five hundred paces. Hans calculated that he was approximately twelve times larger than the notebook. Then he seized his head in both hands and began his final farewell. This pulling everything together was to be de- voted to Gerda. He wanted to forgive her and, without leaving her a written word, to die with the all-embracing thought of her on his lips. But even though all kinds of thoughts appeared and disappeared in his mind, his body remained quite empty. It seemed down here in the nar- row cut that he could not feel anything and needed to go and sit up above again in order to embrace Gerda once more in his mind. But it seemed silly, it annoyed him to have to crawl up the slope. Gradually the emptiness in his body increased and became hunger. -That's my mind beginning to disintegrate, he told himself. Since his illness, he had lived in constant fear of going insane. He had let train after train go by and had sat down here in the narrow, stupid world of the railway cut without thinking of anything at all. It might already be late afternoon. Then Hans Sepp became aware, as if someone suddenly turned something around in him, that this was his final state, to be succeeded only by its execution. He had the nauseating feeling of an imaginary skin eruption over his whole body. He pulled out his pocket knife and cleaned his nails with it; this was an ill-bred habit he had, which he considered very tidy and ele-
1676 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
gant; it made him want to cry. Hesitantly he stood up. Everything inside him had receded from him. He was afraid, but he was no longer master ofhimself; the sole master was the irrevocable resolve that ruled alone in a dark vacuum. Hans looked left and right. One might say that he had already died as he looked in both directions for a train, for this looking was all that was alive in him, this and isolated feelings that drifted past like clumps of grass in a flood. For he no longer knew what to do with himself. He still noticed that his head commanded his legs to leap before the train approached; but his legs were no longer paying attention, they sprang when they wanted to, at the last minute, and Hans's body was struck in the air. He still felt himself plunging down, falling on great sharp knives. Then his world burst into fragments.
Gerda had come back. After Hans's death she had, for the moment, nothing to live for. But if Fischel had expected to find his daughter crushed, he was mistaken. A young lady who obviously had far-reaching plans walked in, wearing the insignia of a Red Cross nurse.
- I ' m going to go as a nurse, Papa, Gerda said.
- N o t right away, not right away, my child! General Director Fischel answered submissively. - W e have to wait and see. No one has any idea what this is going to turn into-
-What should it turn into! I've already seen the young men at the mobilization stations. They're singing. Their wives and fiancees are with them. No one knows how he is going to come back. But if you walk through the city and look in people's eyes, including the people who aren't going to the front yet, it's like a big wedding.
Fischel, concerned, looked at his daughter over his glasses. - 1 would wish another kind of wedding for you, may God preserve us. A Dutch firm has offered me a shipful of margarine, available at the port of Rot- terdam--do you know what that means? Five crowns difference per ton since yesterday! If I don't telegraph right away, tomorrow it will proba- bly be seven crowns. That means prices are going up. Ifthey come back from the campaign with both eyes, the-young men will need them both to look out for their money!
-Well-Gerda said-people are talking about increases, but there have always been increases at the beginning. Mama is quite wild too.
- O h ? Fischel asked. - H a v e you already talked with Mama? What's she up to?
- A t the moment, she's in the kitchen-Gerda motioned with her
From the Posthumous Papers · 1677
head toward the wall, behind which a hall led to the kitchen-and laying in canned goods like mad. Before that, she cashed in her change, like everyone else. And she fired the kitchen maid; since the manservant has to go in the army anyway, she wants to really cut down on the servants.
Fischel nodded with satisfaction. -She's in favor of the war. She hopes the brutality will cease and people will be purified. But she is also a clever woman and is being prudent. Fischel said this a little mockingly and a little tenderly.
- O h , Papa. Gerda flared up. - I f I had wanted to be the way you are, I would have married a knight in shining armor. You keep misunder- standing me. I'm not letting myself be left by the wayside because my first romantic experience wasn't a good one! You'll manage to get me into a field hospital. When the patients come in from the front they should find real, up-to-date people as nurses, not praying nuns! You have no idea how much love and emotion of a sort we've never experi- enced before are (to be seen) in the streets today! We've been living like animals, brought down one day by death; it's different now! It's tremen- dous, I tell you: everyone is a brother; even death isn't an enemy; a per- son loves his own death for the sake of others; today, for the first time, we understand life!
Fischel had been staring at his daughter with pride and concern. Gerda had got even thinner. Sharp, spinsterish lines cut up her face into an eye segment, a nose-mouth part, and a chin-and-neck section, all of which, whenever Gerda was trying to say something, pulled like horses dragging a load that was too heavy: now one part, now another, never all together, giving the face an overstrained and deeply moving quality. -Now she has a new craze-Fischel thought-and will manage once again not to lead a settled life! In his mind he ran down a list of a dozen men who, now that Hans Sepp was fortunately dead, could be regarded as qualified suitors; but in view of the damned uncertainty that had bro- ken out, there was no predicting what was going to happen to any of them tomorrow. Gerda's blond hair seemed to have become shaggier; she had been neglecting her appearance, but this made her hair look more like Fischel's, and it had lost the presumptuous soft, dark-blond smoothness characteristic of her mother's family. Memories of a brave, unkempt fox terrier and of himself, who had fought his way up and at the moment was standing again before something as yet unseen by man, over which he would go on climbing, mingled in his heart with the brave stupidity of his daughter into a warm togetherness. Leo Fischel straight- ened up in his chair and laid his hand on the desktop with emphasis. -M y child! -he said-I have a strange feeling when I hear you talk this way, while people are shouting hurrah and prices are rising. You say I
1678 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
don't have any idea, but I do, except that I can't say myself what it is. Don't believe that I'm not caught up in this too. Sit down, my child!
Gerda did not want to, she was too impatient; but Fischel repeated his wish more strongly, and she obeyed, sitting hesitantly on the extreme edge of an annchair. -This is the first day you're back; listen to me! Fischel said. - Y o u say I understand nothing about love and killing and such things; that may be. But if nothing happens to you in the hospital, which God forbid, you ought to understand me a little before we part again. I was seven years old when we had the war with Prussia. Then too, for two weeks, all the bells pealed and in the synagogue we prayed to God to annihilate the Prussians, who today are our allies. What do you say to that? What should anyone say to that?
Gerda did not want to answer. She had the prejudice that what was going on now belonged to the enthusiastic young, not the cautious old. And only reluctantly, because her father was looking at her so penetrat- ingly, did she murmur some sort ofresponse. -Over the course oftime, people simply learn to understand each other better-was what her an- swer about the Prussians amounted to. But Leo Fischel snatched up her words spiritedly: -No! People don't learn to understand each other better in the course of time; it's just the opposite, I tell you! When you get to know a person and you like him, it may be that you think you understand him; but after you've been around him for twenty-five years you don't understand a word he says! You think, let's say, that he ought to be grateful to you; but no, just at that moment he curses you. Always when you think he has to say yes, he'll say no; and when you think no, he thinks yes. So he can be wann or cold, hard or soft, as it suits him; and do you believe that for your sake he'll be the way you want him to be? It suited your mother as little as it suits this annchair to be a horse, because you're already impatient and want to be off!
Gerda smiled weakly at her father. Since she had come back and seen the new situation, he had made a strong impression on her; she could not help herself. And he loved her, there was no doubting that, and it comforted her.
- B u t what are we going to do with the things that won't let us under- stand them? Fischel asked prophetically. -We measure them, we weigh them, we analyze them mentally, and we direct all our keenness to finding in them something that remains constant, something by which we could get hold of them, on which we can rely and which we can count. Those are the laws of nature, my child, and where we have dis- covered them we can mass-produce things and buy and sell to our heart's content. And now I ask you, how can people relate to one another when they don't understand one another? I tell you, there's only one
From the Posthumous Papers · 1679
way! Only when you stimulate or inhibit his desire can you get a person exactly where you want him. Whoever wants to build solidly must make use of force and basic desires. Then a person suddenly becomes unam- biguous, predictable, dependable, and your experience with him is re- peated everywhere in the same fashion. You can't rely on goodness. You can rely on bad qualities. God is wonderful, my child; he has given us our bad qualities so that we can achieve some semblance of order.
- B u t in that case the order of the world would be nothing but base- ness jumping through hoops! Gerda flared up.
-Y ou're clever! Perhaps so. But who can know? At any rate, I don't point a bayonet at a person's chest to have him do what he thinks is right. Are you following the newspapers? I'm still getting foreign papers, al- though it's beginning to be difficult. Here and abroad they're saying the same things. Get the screws on them. Tighten the screws on them. Cold- bloodedly continue the tight-screw policy. Don't hesitate to apply the "strong method" of breaking windows. That's the way they're talking here, and abroad it's not much different. I believe they've already intro- duced martial law, and ifwe should get into the war zone we'll be threat- ened with the gallows. That's the strong method. I can understand that it makes an impression on you. It's clean, precise, and abhors chatter. It qualifies the nation for great things by treating each individual person who is part of it like a dog!
He bent over to Ulrich and whispered a name in his ear; he did this more out of respect than because the whispering was necessary.
-W hat do you say to that? You have to admit she's a beauty.
Ulrich was astounded. The name Fischel had whispered to him was Arnheim.
Ulrich asked after Gerda. Fischel blew his soul's breath out through pursed lips; his face became anxious and betrayed secret worries. He raised his shoulders and slackly let them fall again. - I thought that you might know where she's staying.
- I have a suspicion-Ulrich answered-but I don't know. I assume she's taken a job.
-Job! As what? As governess in a family with small children! Just think, she takes a job as a domestic servant when she could have every luxury! Just yesterday I concluded a deal on a house, top location, with an apartment that's a palace by itself: But no, no, no! Fischel beat his face with his fists; his pain about his daughter was genuine, or at least was the genuine pain that she was preventing him from enjoying his vic- tory completely.
-W hy don't you tum to the police? Ulrich asked.
- O h , please! I can't advertise my family affairs to the world! Besides, I want to, but my wife won't hear of it. I immediately paid my wife back what I had lost of hers; her high-and-mighty brothers aren't going to wear out their mouths about me! And in the last analysis, Gerda is as much her child as mine. In that line I'm not going to do anything without
1666 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
her agreement. Halfthe day she rides around in my car and searches her eyes out. Of course that's absurd; that's not the way to go about it. But what can one do when one's married to a woman!
- I thought your divorce was under way?
- I t was. That is, only verbally. Not yet legally. The lawyers had just fired the first shots when my situation visibly improved. I don't know myself what our current relation is; I believe Clementine is waiting for a discussion. Of course she's still living at her brother's.
-But then why don't you simply hire a private detective to find Gerda? Ulrich interrupted, having just thought of it.
-Good idea, Fischel replied.
- S h e can be tracked down through Hans Sepp!
- M y wife intends to drive out to Hans Sepp yet again one of these
days and work on him; he's not saying anything.
- O h , you know what? Hans must be doing his military service now;
don't you remember? He got a six-month postponement on account of some exams he had to take, which he ended up not taking. He must have gone in two weeks ago; I can say that precisely because it was very unusual, since around this time only the medical students are called up. So your wife will hardly find him. On the other hand, his feet could re- ally be held to the fire through his superiors. You understand, if some- one there squeezes him between his fingers, it will really loosen his tongue!
·-Splendid, and thank you! I hope my wife will see that too. For as I said, without Clementine I don't want to undertake anything in this di- rection; otheiWise I'll immediately be accused again of being a mur- derer!
Ulrich had to smile. -Freedom seems to have made you anxious, my dear Fischel.
Fischel had always been easily irritated by Ulrich; now that he had become an important man, even more so. -Y ou exaggerate freedom- he said dismissively-and it appears that you've never quite understood my position. Marriage is often a struggle as to who is the stronger; ex- traordinarily difficult as long as it involves feelings, ideas, and fantasies! But not difficult at all as soon as one is successful in life. I have the im- pression that even Clementine is beginning to realize that. One can argue for weeks over whether an opinion is correct. But as soon as one is successful, it is the opinion of a man who might have been mistaken but who needs this incidental error for his success. In the worst case, it's like the hobbyhorse ofsome great artist; and what does one do with the hob- byhorses of great artists? One loves them; one knows that they're a little secret. Since Ulrich was laughing freely, Fischel did not want to stop
From the Posthumous Papers · 1667
talking. -Listen to what I'm telling you! Pay close attention! I said that if one has no other ambitions I nothing to do I has nothing I besides feel- ings and ideas, the quarrel is endless. Ideas and feelings make one petty and neurotic. Unfortunately, that's what happened with me and Clem- entine. Today I have no time. I don't even lmow for certain whether Clementine wants to come back to me; I only believe that she does; she's sorry, and sooner or later that will come out of itself, but then most cer- tainly in a simpler and better way than if I were to think out down to the last detail how it has to come about. You could never do business, either, with a plan that is unhealthily pinned down in evexy detail!
Fischel was almost out of breath, but he felt free. Ulrich had been listening to him seriously, and did not contradict. -I'm quite relieved that everything has taken a tum for the better, he said politely. -Y our wife is an excellent woman, and when it will be advantageous for you to have a great house, she will fulfill that task admirably.
-Exactly. That too. Soon we'll be able to celebrate our silver anniver- sary, and joking aside, if the money is new, the character at least ought to be old. A silver-anniversary is worth almost as much as an aristocratic grandmother, which, moreover, she also has.
Ulrich got up to leave, but Fischel was now in high spirits. - B u t you shouldn't think that Leona managed to clip my wings! I left her to Dr. Amheim with no envy whatsoever. Do you lmow the dancer . . . He mentioned an unfamiliar name and pulled a small photo from his wallet. -W ell, where should you lmow her from, she has seldom appeared in public; private dance evenings, distinguished, Beethoven and Debussy, you lmow, that's now the coming thing. But what I wanted to tell you: you're an athlete, can you manage this? He stepped over to a table and accompanied his words with an echo ofarm and leg. -For instance, she lies this way on a table. The upper body flat on the top, her face leaning with one ear on her propped-up arms, and smiling deliciously. But at the same time her legs are spread apart, like this, along the narrow edge of the table, so that it looks like a big T. Or she suddenly stands on her forearms and palms-like this-of course I can't do it. And she has one foot way over her head and almost on the ground, the other against the cabinet up there. I tell you, you couldn't do a tenth of it, in spite of your gymnastics. That's the modem woman. She's lovelier than we, cleverer than we, and I believe that ifI tried to box with her I'd soon be clutching my belly. The only thing in which a man is stronger today than a woman is in earning money!
1668 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Who had been responsible for Hans Sepp's receiving his black mark? Remarkably enough, it was Count Leinsdorf. Count Leinsdorf had one day asked Ulrich about this young man, and Ulrich had presented him as a harmless muddlehead; but Count Leinsdorfhad recently taken to mis- trusting Ulrich, and this information confirmed his conviction that in Hans Sepp he had before him one of those irresponsible elements who are continually preventing anything good from being done in Kakania. Count Leinsdorf had lately become nervous. He had heard through General Director Leo Fischel that a quite distinct group of immature young people that had formed around Hans Sepp had been the real in- stigator of the demonstration that had caused His Excellency more un- pleasantness than might be supposed. For this political procession had created "a quite unfavorable impression upstairs. " There was no ques- tion that it was completely harmless, and that if one had seriously wanted to prevent such a thing it could be done by a handful of police at any time; but the impression such events make is always much more ter- rifying than they actually merit, and no true politician dares neglect im- pressions. Count Leinsdorf had had serious discussions about this with his friend the Commissioner of Police, which had not produced any re- sults, and when Count Leinsdorf afterward learned the name of Hans Sepp, the Commissioner was quite ready to have this lead followed up in order to appease His Excellency. The Commissioner had been con- vinced from the start that any findings that might have previously es- caped his police would be trifling, and was only confirmed in this opinion by the results ofthe inquiries he had ordered. But still, the pre- occupation of a bureaucracy with an individual always leads to the con- clusion that this individual is shady and unreliable, that is to say, as measured by the standards of precision and security according to the rules and regulations one applies in a bureaucracy. For this reason the Commissioner found it expedient, when there was room for doubt, not to reproach a man like Count Leinsdorf for imagining things but rather to allow the case of Hans Sepp to be treated according to the model that at the moment nothing could be proved against the suspect, on which account he only remained under suspicion until the matter could be completely cleared up. This complete clearing up was tacitly set for Saint Never-Plus-One's Day, when all the files that are still open rise up from the graves ofthe archives. That in spite ofthis it brought suffering on Hans Sepp was a totally impersonal matter, which did not involve trickery ofany kind. A buried open file must from time to time be raised from its grave in order to note on it that it is still not possible to close it,
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 66g
and to mark it with a date on which the archivist is again to present it to his supervisor. This is a universal law of bureaucracy, and if it should involve a file that was never intended to be closed, on the pretext that its documentation was not complete, one must pay very close attention, for it can happen that bureaucrats are promoted, transferred, and die, and that a neophyte receiving the file causes, in his excessive zeal, a small supplementary investigation to be added to one of the last investigations that took place years ago, which causes the file to be kept alive for a few weeks until the investigation ends as a report to be inserted in, and dis- appear with, the file. Through some such process Hans Sepp's file, too, had, without any particular pwpose, become current; since Hans Sepp happened to be in the army, his file had to go to the Ministry of Justice, from there to the Ministry of War, and from there to the Command- ing Officer, etc. , and it is easy to understand how, handed on through the various in and out stamps, presentation stamps, confirmations of action, additions with bureaucratic courtesy, Relinquished, For Re- port, Not Known in this Office, and such, this file took on a dangerous appearance.
Meanwhile, in desperation, Gerda had run to Ulrich and reported that Hans had to be rescued, because he was not up to the conditions he had fallen into and was already clearly showing alarming signs of crack- ing up completely. She had still not returned to her parents' house, kept her whereabouts hidden, and was quite proud at having found some piano lessons to give and being able to add a few pennies to the money her friends lent her. At that time Leo Fischel was making the most strenuous efforts to win her back, and so Ulrich intervened as mediator. After long back-and-forth and paternal admonitions, Gerda let herself be talked into considering favorably a promise to move back to her par- ents' if Papa would declare himself ready and bring about, and Ulrich would support, freeing Hans from his doom. Ulrich spoke with General Director Fischel about it, and General Director Fischel had by then done many a worse thing than was now being asked of him in order to get his daughter back. He turned to Count Leinsdorf. General Director Leo Fischel was actively involved in business relations with Count Leinsdorf; after some commiseration and reflection, His Excellency rec- ommended him to Diotima, who at the moment was on intimate footing with the Ministry of War and, for this reason too more suitable than he was, because this whole affair, especially because ofthe slightly irregular solution required, was more the province ofwoman, ofthe heart, and of feminine tact. In this way Leo Fischel came to Diotima.
Count Leinsdorfhad already prepared her for the visit, and she made a powerful impression on Fischel. He had thought that the time when
1670 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
anything intellectual could compel his admiration lay behind him. But it appeared that beautiful women were especially qualified to soften his newly acquired hardness. He had had his first relapse with Leona. Leona had a face of the sort that General Director Fischel's parents would have admired, and this face again came to his mind when he saw Diotima, although there was really no similarity. At that time, the most miserable drawing teacher or photographer would not have been at peace with himself if he had not felt in his hair or his necktie some breath of genius. For this reason Leona, too, was not simply beautiful for Leo but a genius of beauty; that was the special charm through which she had led him astray into risky undertakings. - A pity she had such a mean character, Fischel thought. - H e r long fat legs were a long sight lovelier than the desiccated legs of these modem dancers. He did not know whether it was the desiccated legs or the unpleasant character that made him think of his wife, Clementine, but at any rate he remembered with emotion the happy years of his marriage, for then Clementine and he had still believed in the value ofgenius, and ifone considers this in a well-disposed way, it was not so misplaced; the line of Leo Fischel's life, looked at in this light, showed no break, for in the last analysis the belief that there were privileged geniuses was a possible way ofjustifying ruth- less and risky deals. Diotima possessed the quality of awakening such ideas that roam through the far reaches of the soul when one sat oppo- site her for the first time, and General Director Fischel meanwhile needed only to brush his hands through his sideburns once and set his pince-nez to rights before he began to speak with a sigh. Diotima con- firmed this sigh with a motherly smile, and before Fischel even got to what he wanted to say, this woman with a wholly justified reputation for her gift ofempathy said: - I have been told the purpose ofyour visit. It is sad; humanity today suffers grievously from its failure to produce more geniuses, while on the other hand it denies and persecutes every young talent that might perhaps develop into one.
Fischel ventured the question: - Y o u have heard what's happening to my protege? He's a troublemaker. Well, and what of it? All great people were troublemakers in their youth. I do not, by the way, in the least con- done it. But he was also, ifyou will permit me the observation, a forceps birth; his head was somewhat compressed; he is extremely irritable, and I thought that that might perhaps be a way . . . ?
Diotima raised her eyebrows sadly. - I spoke about it with one of the leading gentlemen of the War Ministry; unfortunately, I must tell you, General Director, that your request is meeting with almost insurmount- able difficulties.
Sadly and indignantly Fischel raised his hands. -But one cannot
From the Posthumous Papers · 1671
force an intellectual person when it goes against the intellect! The fellow has some ideas about refusing service in wartime, and the gentlemen will end up shooting him on mel
-Y es, Diotima replied. -Y ou are so right! One should not force an intellectual when it goes against the intellect. You are voicing my own opinion. But how is one to make a general understand that?
A pause ensued. Fischel almost thought he should leave, but when he scraped his feet Diotima laid a hand on his arm with mute permission to remain. She seemed to be thinking. Fischel racked his brains to see ifhe could help her find a good idea. He would have gladly offered her money for the leading gentleman of the War Ministry she had men- tioned; but such an idea was at that time absurd. Fischel felt helpless. -A Midas! occurred to him; why, he did not exactly know, and he sought to recollect this ancient legend, without quite being able to. The lenses of his spectacles almost misted over with emotion.
At this moment Diotima brightened. - I believe, General Director, that I perhaps might indeed be able to help you a little. I would in any case be delighted if I could. I can't get over the idea that an intellectual can't be forced against the intellect! Of course, it would be better not to talk too much to the gentlemen of the War Ministry about the nature of this intellect.
Leo Fischel obligingly concurred with this circumspection.
- B u t this case has also, so to speak, a maternal side--Diotima went on-a feminine, unlogical aspect; I mean, given so-and-so many thou- sands of soldiers, just one can't be so important. I'll try to make clear to a high officer who is a friend of mine that out of political considerations His Excellency considers it important to have this young man mustered out; the right people should always be put in the right places, and your future son-in-law is not of the slightest use in a barracks, whereas he . . . well, somehow that's the way I see it. Unfortunately, the military is uncommonly resistant to exceptions. But what I hope is that we can at least get the young man a fairly long leave, and then we can think what to do about the rest.
Charmed, Leo Fischel bent over Diotima's hand. This woman had won his complete confidence.
The visit was not without its effect on his way of thinking either. For understandable reasons, he had lately become quite materialistic. His experiences of life had led him to the viewpoint that a right-thinking man had to watch out for himself. Be independent; need nothing from others for which you did not have something they wanted in return: but that is also a Protestant feeling, much as it was for the first colonists in America. Leo Fischel still loved to philosophize, even though his time
1672 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
for it had become much more limited. His affairs now sometimes brought him into contact with the high clergy. He discovered that it is the mistake of all religions to teach virtue as something which is only negative, as abstinence and selflessness; this makes it anachronistic and gives the deals one has to make an aura of something like secret vice. On the other hand, the public religion ofefficiency, as he met it in Germany through his business, had seized hold of him. People are glad to help a capable and enterprising person; in other words, he can get credit any- where: this was a positive formula that allowed one to get somewhere. It taught one to be ready to help withou~ reckoning on gratitude, just as Christian teaching demands, although it did not include the uncertainty of having to rely on noble feeling in someone else, but made use of ego- tism as the single dependable human quality, which it without doubt is. And money is a tool of genius that makes it possible to calculate and regulate this basic quality. Money is ordered selfishness brought into re- lation with efficiency. An enormous organization of selfishness accord- ing to the hierarchical order of how it is earned. It is a creative umbrella organization built on baseness-emperors and kings have not tamed the passions the way money has. Fischel often wondered what human demi- urge might have invented money. Ifeverythingwere to be accessible to money, and every matter to have its price, which unfortunately is still far from being the case, then any other morality besides the existence of trade would be of no use at all. This was his opinion and his conviction.
Even during the time when he had revered the great ideas of humanity, he had always felt a certain aversion to them in the mouth of anybody else. If someone simply says "virtue" or "beauty," there is something as unnatural and affected about it as-when an Austrian speaks in the past tense. Now even that had increased. His life was consumed by work, striving for power, efficiency, and the dependence on the greatness of affairs, which he had to observe and exploit. The intellectual and spiri- tual spheres came to seem to him more and more like clouds having no connection with the earth. But he was no happier. He felt himself some- how weakened. Every amusement seemed to him more superficial than before. He increased his stimuli, with the result that he succeeded only in making himself more distracted. He made fun of his daughter, but secretly he envied her her ideas.
And as Diotima had spoken so naturally and freely of maternal feel- ing, soul, mind, and goodness, he was constantly thinking: -What a mother this would be for Gerda! (? wife for you) He wept inside to hear the beauty of her speech, and he had great satisfaction in noticing how these great words gave birth to a tiny element of corruption-however elegantly-for she was ultimately fulfilling: his request, whatever reasons
From the Posthumous Papers · 1673
might have been behind it. In certain cases, when there is a question of some injustice, idealism is almost better than naked calculation; this was the teaching that Fischel drew directly from the impressions of his visit, and that he intended to think about urgently on his further course.
Hans Sepp had left the barracks and not shown up for duty, although he had been transferred from the hospital back to his company. He knew that his return would entail the most unbearable consequences; being punished like an animal and, still worse-for punishment is soli- t:aty-beforehand the dull, set face of the captain and the necessity of having to be interrogated by him. Hans knew that he had made up his mind not to go back. For the first time the holy fire of defiance again flared up in him, and the unbending sense ofpurity that avoids contami- nation with the impure flashed through him. This made even more of a torture the memory that he had lost the right to it. He considered his illness incurable and was convinced that he had been sullied for the rest of his life. He had resolved to kill himself; he had left the barracks to completely cut off a return to life; the thought that in a few hours he would have killed himselfwas the only thing that could to some degree substitute for his self-respect, even ifit could not restore it.
In order not to be immediately recognized ifthey should be looking for him, he had put on civilian clothes. He walked through the city on foot, for he felt incapable of taking a cab; he had a long route before him, as it had seemed to him for some reason a matter ofcourse that he would kill himself only in the open countryside. He actually could have done it on the way, in the middle of the city; presumably, certain ceremonies merely serve to postpone the business a bit, and among these Hans in- cluded a last glimpse of nature; but he was not at all one of those people who think about such questions in a situation such as the one he was now in. The famous dark veil that arises when the moisture content of the emotions becomes extreme without precipitating tears lay before his eyes, and the noises of the world echoed softly. Passing cars, the throng of people, housefronts stretching for blocks, all looked like a bas-relief. The tears that Hans Sepp did not want to shed outwardly in public or for other reasons nonetheless fell through him inwardly as if down an in- credibly deep, dark shaft onto his own grave, in which he already felt himself lying, which signifies about the same thing as that he was simul- taneously sitting beside it and grieving for himself. There is in all this a force that is very cheering, and by the time Hans got to the city line,
1674 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
where the train tracks ran upon which he wanted to throw himself as soon as a train came along, his grief had become attached to and affili- ated with so many things that it really felt quite good. The stretch he was on was apparently not well traveled, and Hans had to tell himself that upon arriving he would have immediately thrown himself in front of a train had one happened to be passing by at that instant, but that not lmowing the schedule, he could not simply lie down on the tracks and wait. He sat down among the sparse vegetation on the slope at the top of a cut where the railway made a curve, and he could see in both direc- tions. A train passed, but he gave himself time. He observed the incred- ible increase in speed that takes place when the train shoots, as it were, through one's vicinity, and listened to the din of the wheels in order to be able to picture how he was going to be pounded in it by the next train. This clanging and bawling seemed, in contrast to what he saw, to last for an extraordinruy length of time, and Hans turned cold.
The question of what had made him want to end his life by means of a railway train was not at all clear. Hanging had something distorted and spooky. Jumping out a window is a woman's way. He had no poison. To cut his veins he needed a bathtub. On this path of eliminating other pos- sibilities, he pursued methodically the same course he had taken in blind determination with a single step: it satisfied him; his instincts had not yet been affected. To be sure, he had left out death by shooting; he thought of it now for the first time. But Hans did not own a pistol, nor did he lmow what to do with one, and he did not want to share his last moment with his army rifle. He had to be free of small misfortunes when he ex- ited this life. This reminded him that he had to prepare himself in- wardly. He had sinned and contaminated himself: he had to hold on to that. Someone else in his situation might perhaps have hoped for the prospect of recovery; but while recovery might be possible, salvation was irrevocably lost. Involuntarily, Hans pulled out of his coat his little note- book and a pencil; but before he could jot down his idea, he remem- bered that this was now quite pointless. He idly held notebook and pencil in his hands. His whole mind was directed at the phrase that he had become impure and godless. There was a lot to be said about that. For instance, that Christianity, influenced by Judaism, permitted sin to be redeemed through remorse and penitence, while the pure, Teutonic idea of being healthy and whole permitted of no bargaining or trading. Wholeness is lost once and for all, like virginity; and of course that is precisely where the greatness and challenge of the idea lies. Where today does one find such greatness? Nowhere. Hans was convinced that the world would suffer a great loss from his having to eliminate himself. The size and force of a train was really almost the only possible way of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1675
expressing the size and force of such a case. Another one went past. This technological marvel was small and tiny if one compared it to the astro- nomical construction techniques of the Egyptians and Assyrians, but at all events a train almost succeeded in enabling the present to express itself gothically, yearning outward beyond the limitations of matter. Hans raised his hand and almost irresolutely waved at people, who waved back and shoved their heads out the window in bunches, like the people-grapes on ancient naive sculptures. This made him feel better, but feeling good, grief, and everything he could think of was simply like smoke, and when it had drifted away the sentence that Hans Sepp had become impure and was not to be saved lay there again, undisturbed;
nothing lasting was connected with it, the idea no longer wished to grow.
1
If Hans had been sitting at home before a table with pen and paper, it
perhaps might have turned out otherwise; it was just this that gave him the feeling that he was here for no other purpose than to put an end to his existence.
He snapped the pencil in two and tore the notebook into little pieces. That was a major step. Then he climbed down the slope, sat in the grass at the edge of the gravel ballast, and threw the shreds of his intellectual world in front of the next train. The train scattered them. Nothing was to be found of the pencil; the bright paper butterflies, broken on the wheels and sucked up, covered the right-of-way on both sides for five hundred paces. Hans calculated that he was approximately twelve times larger than the notebook. Then he seized his head in both hands and began his final farewell. This pulling everything together was to be de- voted to Gerda. He wanted to forgive her and, without leaving her a written word, to die with the all-embracing thought of her on his lips. But even though all kinds of thoughts appeared and disappeared in his mind, his body remained quite empty. It seemed down here in the nar- row cut that he could not feel anything and needed to go and sit up above again in order to embrace Gerda once more in his mind. But it seemed silly, it annoyed him to have to crawl up the slope. Gradually the emptiness in his body increased and became hunger. -That's my mind beginning to disintegrate, he told himself. Since his illness, he had lived in constant fear of going insane. He had let train after train go by and had sat down here in the narrow, stupid world of the railway cut without thinking of anything at all. It might already be late afternoon. Then Hans Sepp became aware, as if someone suddenly turned something around in him, that this was his final state, to be succeeded only by its execution. He had the nauseating feeling of an imaginary skin eruption over his whole body. He pulled out his pocket knife and cleaned his nails with it; this was an ill-bred habit he had, which he considered very tidy and ele-
1676 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
gant; it made him want to cry. Hesitantly he stood up. Everything inside him had receded from him. He was afraid, but he was no longer master ofhimself; the sole master was the irrevocable resolve that ruled alone in a dark vacuum. Hans looked left and right. One might say that he had already died as he looked in both directions for a train, for this looking was all that was alive in him, this and isolated feelings that drifted past like clumps of grass in a flood. For he no longer knew what to do with himself. He still noticed that his head commanded his legs to leap before the train approached; but his legs were no longer paying attention, they sprang when they wanted to, at the last minute, and Hans's body was struck in the air. He still felt himself plunging down, falling on great sharp knives. Then his world burst into fragments.
Gerda had come back. After Hans's death she had, for the moment, nothing to live for. But if Fischel had expected to find his daughter crushed, he was mistaken. A young lady who obviously had far-reaching plans walked in, wearing the insignia of a Red Cross nurse.
- I ' m going to go as a nurse, Papa, Gerda said.
- N o t right away, not right away, my child! General Director Fischel answered submissively. - W e have to wait and see. No one has any idea what this is going to turn into-
-What should it turn into! I've already seen the young men at the mobilization stations. They're singing. Their wives and fiancees are with them. No one knows how he is going to come back. But if you walk through the city and look in people's eyes, including the people who aren't going to the front yet, it's like a big wedding.
Fischel, concerned, looked at his daughter over his glasses. - 1 would wish another kind of wedding for you, may God preserve us. A Dutch firm has offered me a shipful of margarine, available at the port of Rot- terdam--do you know what that means? Five crowns difference per ton since yesterday! If I don't telegraph right away, tomorrow it will proba- bly be seven crowns. That means prices are going up. Ifthey come back from the campaign with both eyes, the-young men will need them both to look out for their money!
-Well-Gerda said-people are talking about increases, but there have always been increases at the beginning. Mama is quite wild too.
- O h ? Fischel asked. - H a v e you already talked with Mama? What's she up to?
- A t the moment, she's in the kitchen-Gerda motioned with her
From the Posthumous Papers · 1677
head toward the wall, behind which a hall led to the kitchen-and laying in canned goods like mad. Before that, she cashed in her change, like everyone else. And she fired the kitchen maid; since the manservant has to go in the army anyway, she wants to really cut down on the servants.
Fischel nodded with satisfaction. -She's in favor of the war. She hopes the brutality will cease and people will be purified. But she is also a clever woman and is being prudent. Fischel said this a little mockingly and a little tenderly.
- O h , Papa. Gerda flared up. - I f I had wanted to be the way you are, I would have married a knight in shining armor. You keep misunder- standing me. I'm not letting myself be left by the wayside because my first romantic experience wasn't a good one! You'll manage to get me into a field hospital. When the patients come in from the front they should find real, up-to-date people as nurses, not praying nuns! You have no idea how much love and emotion of a sort we've never experi- enced before are (to be seen) in the streets today! We've been living like animals, brought down one day by death; it's different now! It's tremen- dous, I tell you: everyone is a brother; even death isn't an enemy; a per- son loves his own death for the sake of others; today, for the first time, we understand life!
Fischel had been staring at his daughter with pride and concern. Gerda had got even thinner. Sharp, spinsterish lines cut up her face into an eye segment, a nose-mouth part, and a chin-and-neck section, all of which, whenever Gerda was trying to say something, pulled like horses dragging a load that was too heavy: now one part, now another, never all together, giving the face an overstrained and deeply moving quality. -Now she has a new craze-Fischel thought-and will manage once again not to lead a settled life! In his mind he ran down a list of a dozen men who, now that Hans Sepp was fortunately dead, could be regarded as qualified suitors; but in view of the damned uncertainty that had bro- ken out, there was no predicting what was going to happen to any of them tomorrow. Gerda's blond hair seemed to have become shaggier; she had been neglecting her appearance, but this made her hair look more like Fischel's, and it had lost the presumptuous soft, dark-blond smoothness characteristic of her mother's family. Memories of a brave, unkempt fox terrier and of himself, who had fought his way up and at the moment was standing again before something as yet unseen by man, over which he would go on climbing, mingled in his heart with the brave stupidity of his daughter into a warm togetherness. Leo Fischel straight- ened up in his chair and laid his hand on the desktop with emphasis. -M y child! -he said-I have a strange feeling when I hear you talk this way, while people are shouting hurrah and prices are rising. You say I
1678 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
don't have any idea, but I do, except that I can't say myself what it is. Don't believe that I'm not caught up in this too. Sit down, my child!
Gerda did not want to, she was too impatient; but Fischel repeated his wish more strongly, and she obeyed, sitting hesitantly on the extreme edge of an annchair. -This is the first day you're back; listen to me! Fischel said. - Y o u say I understand nothing about love and killing and such things; that may be. But if nothing happens to you in the hospital, which God forbid, you ought to understand me a little before we part again. I was seven years old when we had the war with Prussia. Then too, for two weeks, all the bells pealed and in the synagogue we prayed to God to annihilate the Prussians, who today are our allies. What do you say to that? What should anyone say to that?
Gerda did not want to answer. She had the prejudice that what was going on now belonged to the enthusiastic young, not the cautious old. And only reluctantly, because her father was looking at her so penetrat- ingly, did she murmur some sort ofresponse. -Over the course oftime, people simply learn to understand each other better-was what her an- swer about the Prussians amounted to. But Leo Fischel snatched up her words spiritedly: -No! People don't learn to understand each other better in the course of time; it's just the opposite, I tell you! When you get to know a person and you like him, it may be that you think you understand him; but after you've been around him for twenty-five years you don't understand a word he says! You think, let's say, that he ought to be grateful to you; but no, just at that moment he curses you. Always when you think he has to say yes, he'll say no; and when you think no, he thinks yes. So he can be wann or cold, hard or soft, as it suits him; and do you believe that for your sake he'll be the way you want him to be? It suited your mother as little as it suits this annchair to be a horse, because you're already impatient and want to be off!
Gerda smiled weakly at her father. Since she had come back and seen the new situation, he had made a strong impression on her; she could not help herself. And he loved her, there was no doubting that, and it comforted her.
- B u t what are we going to do with the things that won't let us under- stand them? Fischel asked prophetically. -We measure them, we weigh them, we analyze them mentally, and we direct all our keenness to finding in them something that remains constant, something by which we could get hold of them, on which we can rely and which we can count. Those are the laws of nature, my child, and where we have dis- covered them we can mass-produce things and buy and sell to our heart's content. And now I ask you, how can people relate to one another when they don't understand one another? I tell you, there's only one
From the Posthumous Papers · 1679
way! Only when you stimulate or inhibit his desire can you get a person exactly where you want him. Whoever wants to build solidly must make use of force and basic desires. Then a person suddenly becomes unam- biguous, predictable, dependable, and your experience with him is re- peated everywhere in the same fashion. You can't rely on goodness. You can rely on bad qualities. God is wonderful, my child; he has given us our bad qualities so that we can achieve some semblance of order.
- B u t in that case the order of the world would be nothing but base- ness jumping through hoops! Gerda flared up.
-Y ou're clever! Perhaps so. But who can know? At any rate, I don't point a bayonet at a person's chest to have him do what he thinks is right. Are you following the newspapers? I'm still getting foreign papers, al- though it's beginning to be difficult. Here and abroad they're saying the same things. Get the screws on them. Tighten the screws on them. Cold- bloodedly continue the tight-screw policy. Don't hesitate to apply the "strong method" of breaking windows. That's the way they're talking here, and abroad it's not much different. I believe they've already intro- duced martial law, and ifwe should get into the war zone we'll be threat- ened with the gallows. That's the strong method. I can understand that it makes an impression on you. It's clean, precise, and abhors chatter. It qualifies the nation for great things by treating each individual person who is part of it like a dog!
